If you have been living under a rock, or if you don’t write, you may not have heard of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. Basically, the premise is you take the month of November and try to write 1667 words a day, so you end up with a 50,000 word novel, short but nothing to sneeze at.

I first did NaNoWriMo in 2006, after finding out about it on day three or four of the month. My first novelizing effort was the protozoan version of FANGS FOR NOTHING. In the intervening years, I’ve done Nano two more times and finished it both times.

This year I’m doing it a little different. I’m stretching the rules. This is not without precedent, as I have several writer friends who do this. I’m not starting a new work, I’m just going to keep working on my work in progress. I’m even going to count my word count for this blog entry. And I have a very good reason for doing this. I’m not so concerned with the word count–I know I can write a 50,000 page book–as I am with the camaraderie and the fun of hanging out with other writers.

I guess you could argue that my novel will simply be a little less coherent than usual, but it will have the right word count.

There is a part of me that really wants to throw caution to the wind, dump everything I’m doing, and start a new piece by the seat of my pants, but I’m just don’t quite feel like doing that at the moment.